But if you’re a beginner and not yet very good at marketing, you could lose the money that you have earned so far.

One of my colleagues had earned about $23 in his ClickBank account, but as he wasn’t really promoting his links very well, he just didn’t get any more sales for quuite some time. When finally he went to check his balance, he saw that it had fallen to $16, and there were a number of small ($1 and $5) transactions on the account. He couldn’t understand what they were, so I investigated for him.

It turned out that those $1 charges were for a “Dormant account”. In ClickBank’s world, this means an account that has a positive balance, but no transactions for an extended period of time.
I investigated further and found that the following scale of charges are applied:
$1 if the account is dormant for 90 days
$5 if the account is dormant for 180 days
$15 if the account is dormant for 365 days

So if you get sales of ClickBank products very rarely, your money might be eaten up in charges, and you may never receive a payment cheque (check).

Of course, if you get sales that rarely, then you probably shouldn’t be bothering with ClickBank, or you seriously need to go on an affiliate marketing course!

It’s a bit of a cheek though. I doubt whether it costs anything to manage a dormant account, and all the time ClickBank have your money, they’re earning interest on it.